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Cracking course preview video on youtube with Nina Hoffman and Steve Peat, excitement for us dreamers!
DNF in seeding for Weesky Jnr, hope all is OK
Another whirlwind weekend of insanity and craziness.
As we saw, Friday went pretty damn well, Sat started off in the same fashion really, i sent him up for first run, he came down happy, the weather was holding and the track was good. By the time we got to 3rd practice it had all gone well and he was up for it.
Mid morning he was getting play in the main pivot (again) so bearings out and new ones fitted but i think it's the spacer that holds it all together that's worn, so £40 out of the bank for that)
Sadly the feeling of "oh" came around soon after lunch as it was seeding and he was due down.. but after a gap, another rider appeared. I seem to cope fairly well with it though and wasn't hugely worried. 30s later a text message arrived "flat tyre, walking down".
By the time he arrived at the bottom he'd managed to find 2 flats, both front and rear. The bloke repairing wheels had run out of rims, 3 of our mates did 15 rims over the course of the weekend between them, yeah really.... wow... 15. I ended up giving one of our 27.5s to one of them for Poland World Cup in 2 weeks as he didn't know if he could get a spare for it.
So it was wheel stripdown and when i re-inflated the front it looked and seemed like he'd just blown the air, but i stripped it and checked wheel, tape etc...
Wheel 2 wasn't quite so smooth. I inflated that and it was leaking straight away, after whipping the tyre off it seemed it had a few little snicks in the tape, so i decided to re-tape it. But then my sodding Mobi washer seemed to have lost the ability to pump water as an o-ring had gone since it was last used. (£200 later an order for a Worx Hydroshot was placed at Screwfix for collection Mon). So i couldn't get the wheel clean easily.... GRRR.
Eventually i re-taped it and threw the tyre on, it STILL wouldn't stay up, so the tyre is very suspect and i think he's damaged it on or around the bead. A new Argotal came out of the box and that went on. It stayed up fine. We then noticed that the rotor had been fitted incorrectly by the previous owner, so that was flipped.
The bike was then all back together and due to the forecast i'd fitted 2 x Argotals for the coming rain.
Sausage pasta was thrown together and people fed... It was then an early night in the tent/gazebo.... But that went about as well as you'd expect in FW as the overnight rain and wind came in hard... I didn't sleep well.
Sunday was a short practice and the boy looked at the rain, fitted his kit and went out. He came down shaking his head.... Eeeek.
"gears don't work, they're all over the place and the chain dropped off the cassette."
So it was a bit of work again on it, setting the high/low screws and sending him out for his last practice. The rain was still light but the wind was getting up.
"still no good"
I then diagnosed an issue with the SRAM UDH, it was coming loose.. maybe a thread issue, maybe something else, but it went in the bin and a new UDH was fitted... high/low set, brake aligned and ready to go.
We tested it in the car park and all seemed OK enough.
The wind and rain was playing a factor now and the early Youth riders got the best of it.. "got blown of the track 3 times" from the later of the Youths we know was a pattern.
The boy was down early out of the list due to his DNF in seeding with Seb in front of him (who borrowed our wheel, but not fitted it for race). Seb didn't come down though and on live timing hadn't gone through split 2.... It seemed he'd killed his 4th wheel of the weekend. Massive dent in it... Damn.
The boy came down and looked OK, but had clearly had a lying on the floor moment looking at the sky, there was mud on his trousers and shoulders... Arses....
He'd got blown about a lot up top and exiting the woods he went for an inside line and got in wrong and went down. But he was up and OK. He came over the line and the ending was a P38. Not what we wanted from the weekend that looked pretty positive early on, but we can't change it and can't do a lot about it.
But the bike held up fine (apart from hie brake lever which he's broken the adjuster (another £80 on top) and he got down in 1 piece.
It was then packing all the wet things away, it's amazing just how much stuff you have when cooking, gazebo, camping, tables, kit etc for a weekend.
5 hours later we're in a TravelLodge getting some kip before a 5am start to get back for school.
Pics if/when i have some energy back. There'll be some stories about bike stuff too maybe 🙂
Great to meet and chat to LeeGee, sorry i missed you today mate, hope you got a good nights kip in the camper 🙂
There was another new DT Swiss 511 on the other side with a new Kryptotal on it, but this was mid wheel insanity.
Well done ill bet you are proud of him. 👍
Well done ill bet you are proud of him. 👍
Always. I'm proud of all of them in truth, it's a lot that we ask of them, riding that place at race speed time and time again, in pressure situations. It's also tough for each and every one of them who do t get the results they hope for.
They all then get up and go again next week. Well, hopefully, as long as I can sort his bike lol. But it should be a 5 minute fix and him ready to go. It's Rhyd Y Felin this weekend, so just a few days and we're back in the mix and ready. It's funny at races, you can see us all getting tired and weary over the weekend, people running round getting bikes, wheels, riders etc all sorted. Then the tension of seeing the parents at the bottom, especially when their child doesn't come down when they're supposed to. It's a tough game we all play at.
But there are rewards we all get from it as well. Sometimes they're just hidden a bit lol.
This leads us nicely into a few things, the main one being next year's plans for bikes.
The Session is 3 years old soon and has been hammered, maybe not as many miles as some riders, but in terms of intensity it's hammered week in week out.
There's also the suspicion it's getting a bit small as he gets his last bits of growing.
We've debated the obvious and easiest choice of the Session but he fancies a change and fancies going a little radical, Zerode G3. So with that in mind he did some car park runs on a mates G3 Sat evening. He felt (as did I) that the front end felt really really heavy, but is that because the rear is so light? Not sure. Or were the massive Fox forks just weighty? Again not sure. He had the option to do a run on it, but matey would have been stuck if he'd broken it, so wasn't the right time or place. But a long long chat about the Zerode was had and it being 90% positive. Happily this guy isn't sponsored by Zerode although it is an ex Hardline bike, so we could get honest answers. They seem good on reliability with a few minor quirks in the belt system, but nothing major. The boy felt the rear rebound was too fast, but we didn't discuss that with the owner till after his race run as we didn't want to put him off.
Theres a plan forming
Fox40 is circa 300g heavier than a boxxer. Also worth looking into the geometry and how that could change his position. Weight distribution on the bike will be different, 9 speed pinion box is 2kg, an XO carbon crank assembly is around 900g, so there is a fair shift weight forward, so picking up the front will feel more odd.
Whatever you are picking it first and foremost needs to reliable, with no wacky fasteners or other nonsense thats hard to get hold of.
If I was going the gearbox route, would be hard to look past the Gamux (as its available) and the Atherton when they launch it. I'd also be quite tempted to long shock a Geometron G1 GPI or see if they'd do a G18.
I have a Zerode Taniwah with the 12 speed Pinion box. Faultless in just over 12 months. The drive train is fit and forget apart from an annual oil change.
I fear you will have too much time on your hands 🤣
Nice to meet you too Steve & James & girlfriend..
I was at the top watching and missed the opportunity for a great photo as I was talking to a marshall when he came past!
His run coincided with probably the worst if the weather at the top. I saw riders almost stall as they turned into the wind, it was horrible up there.
I came to find you again about 3.30 but you'd gone, I was interesting to talk to you and learn a bit about what goes onm
Nice to meet you too Steve & James & girlfriend..
I was at the top watching and missed the opportunity for a great photo as I was talking to a marshall when he came past!
His run coincided with probably the worst if the weather at the top. I saw riders almost stall as they turned into the wind, it was horrible up there.
I came to find you again about 3.30 but you'd gone, I was interesting to talk to you and learn a bit about what goes onm
Funny enough he mentioned that when he hit the wind he almost stopped completely... it was obviously pretty blowy down bottom but you don't get much of an insight as to what's happening up the top.
We got off pretty handy as we wanted to get to the hotel at something respectable.
I'm pretty fried today, i even went out for a ride and completely forgot to take a photo for insta lol.
Fair play for getting through the weekend!
Did all category's do the big drop or was there a b-line for the U17?
There was a B line option yes. I didn't see it at all though as I was chilling at the bottom mostly, right up until I was then in crazy guy repair mode.
Sadly after checking, his Mavens lever is toast. I thought I may be able to swap from a spare he broke 2 weeks ago, but sadly not. It's the threaded pin he bent and that seems to be pressed in so we need a new one. Can't find any in stock anywhere for a week or two, but we have a spare to get out racing this weekend. Just needs fitting and bleeding etc.
I tried a Zerode G3 last summer in Morzine (the dad let me try his son’s because I managed to reduce his dislocated shoulder and patella on the side of the mountain and give him some tramadol while they waited to be airlifted out and his son wasn’t going to be riding it the next day)
i’m nowhere near as good as Weeksy Jnr but I thought it was a really nice DH bike. If I had the time and money I’d be looking at getting one. The owner said they’d bought it when they first came out and it had been so reliable compared to their previous V10 (The son had been smashing it down bike parks for well over a year as well as racing it in NZ).
Fox40 is circa 300g heavier than a boxxer. Also worth looking into the geometry and how that could change his position. Weight distribution on the bike will be different, 9 speed pinion box is 2kg, an XO carbon crank assembly is around 900g, so there is a fair shift weight forward, so picking up the front will feel more odd.
Whatever you are picking it first and foremost needs to reliable, with no wacky fasteners or other nonsense thats hard to get hold of.
If I was going the gearbox route, would be hard to look past the Gamux (as its available) and the Atherton when they launch it. I'd also be quite tempted to long shock a Geometron G1 GPI or see if they'd do a G18.
The only issue with the Gamux is the cost. It's £10,000 for a full build not including any shipping or import duties, £6400 for frame only.
With Zerode we have one firm option to start with that would see the frame only for £3000. That's a massive difference and I could collect from EU to save shipping and import fees after buying it used 😁
The Atherton of course would be an option but we have no idea on either price or availability currently which rules it out of thoughts currently.
We're going to meet mate and do some runs on his anyway, I know it sometimes looks like I jump in and do things, but before I get to posting I've usually done a lot of research and thinking. This is a slow burner idea.
If it's not one of those, it'll likely be a Session.
(But there's a few wild card thought/plans in the background I'm trying to work on)
Well as i'm waiting for a training course to begin i fitted his new brake this morning. Sadly at the moment i can't get just the level blade, so it's again a whole brake (2 in last few weeks) and the cost is obviously greater. But it's on and bled up and ready for weekend.
Waiting for some prices for another pair of blades now, i can then have 2 spare top-ends. I was tempted to buy a spare set of MAvens, but the only ones about were a green splatter pattern and the boy didn't like that at all.
Bit left of field but have you thought about fitting Oak Components levers. Transformed our MT7s and are now available for SRAM according to their site
https://oakcomponents.de/en/products/oak-sr-bremshebel-set-passend-fur-sram
From looking at them, i don't think they'd have saved either of the issues we had. But certainly something to think about in the future.
I was tempted to buy a spare set of MAvens, but the only ones about were a green splatter pattern and the boy didn't like that at all.
The boy has better taste than whoever picked that colour at SRAM imho
So it appears we did have a minor rim issue. Whether that was early on or late in weekend i'm not sure, but we have a bit a a crack it seems.
That wheel has an Argotal so means it was the race-run wheel. But i don't know for sure if it cracked in the morning or on race run.
That does of course mean new rim time... I think we're going to run this one with a Cushcore in it as an emergency/hard-core ride wheel. When all things are lost, this one comes out to play.
So this weekend at Pearce we're down to just 2 rears. Which shouldn't be an issue... but if it is, then it is... lol.
It's going to be expensive that's for sure... but not sure there's an easy answer 😀 
Would be cheaper to lace a new rim if money concerns you.
Would be cheaper to lace a new rim if money concerns you.
Money is always a concern. So yeah this one is getting a new rim. My LBS is just chatting with a few people to decide on what rim he's going to throw on there.
DT Swiss, they hold up far better than anything else out there. EX Series is defacto choice at world cup, FR if you are a serial wheel killer.
DT Swiss, they hold up far better than anything else out there. EX Series is defacto choice at world cup, FR if you are a serial wheel killer.
did a swap this weekend with a mate, our 27.5 for his 29er, it's an EX511 rim on there, pretty much new.
EX Series is defacto choice at world cup,
When they only have to last the run as your sponsored. They aren’t really meant to be dh rims
Collected his new brake lever today. I fitted the spare on Monday, but when he took it out on Tues it wasn't a perfect bleed and due to a training course i'd not tested it, so it was a bit soft. That's now re-bled and should be good for weekend.
I've dropped his wheel off to be rebuilt with a new rim but that's not ready for this weekend.
We shouldn't really need it though i hope.
I've fitted a new bottom pivot sleeve/spacer/bolt thing. It just wasn't perfect, you could feel the small ridge in there and if i torqued it to 30Nm as per the book, it had play after the next run. You can see where the annodising has worn off and it's ridged from use. So a new one was £40 and now fitted.
Last job is booking a double demo day at Atherton in a few weeks time. He's got the morning on an A200 and the afternoon on an S200. Along with some sanity checking runs at lunch on the Session to see which and what and how things all compare. It'll come down to feel, size etc but also come down to speed. There's no current option to either buy or demo an A200G so that's completely off the cards.
There are other options in the discussions at the moment for 2026, but we don't need to go into any of those currently 🙂
Weather is looking good for Pearce... lets see what the weekend brings 🙂
We may even break out the Xynotal i hope 😀
P5 after run 1. Sloppy run with some mistakes
That’s a good result. Very competitive class - 1 second between 2nd and 5th places 😮
Friday straight from work it was up the semi back way to Wales. It was slow as it was a BH weekend and we got there after about 4 hours.
He went on a track walk and we cooked food and had beers.
Eventually after meeting and greeting tonnes of paddock mates, it was bed for a bloody freezing cold 🥶 night sleep, or lack of it.
Sat brought practice, with the new pivot spacer his bike was perfect and 21/22 in the Kryptotals once again all was going fine. He was loving the track and looking quick.
Several riders needed spanner work on Sat from a brake bleed, to seatposts issues and a gear inner and outer.
After practice it was beer and banter then one of the lads asked about his boys rear wheel. It had so much play it was barely attached 😃😃
So his rear wheel was stripped down after confirming we had all the correct bearings and replaced. He just stood there looking bewildered as me and another set about it. Job done.
After a slightly less cold night in tent but still a rubbish sleep, we were met with sunshine again
Coffee and bike check done and a short practice session. Which brought another 2 mechanicals to the gazebo, one for a shock issue and a snapped gear cable.
Race run 1, he came down in P5 and we were reasonably happy with that apart from the fact his mate Geordie pipped him and was sitting in P2. Damn.
But he'd made some mistakes and felt he had more.
Pizza and a beer and race run 2 was upon us.
His mate Trowbs hadn't put in the best run 1 and was in 9th, but came down and stuck it in P5 this demoting the boy to 6th.
He came down 2.2s quicker on run 2 and put it in P4. Whoop.
Sadly it was short lived as the lad he'd stolen P4 from put it back into P3 and we were back in P5. George ended up P3, which was ace for him.
I can't honestly see how the weekend could have gone a lot better, he was fast, happy, positive and smooth. Everything you want. He was 1s off 2nd place, it's that fine a margin at these races.
A long slog home got us back at 9ish, unloading the van was an hour and now I'm collapsed on the bed.
It'
s a tough sport this is
Today was tyre fitting, exciting huh. I fitted 4 different tyres to a spare Hunt wheel. I thought at FW last time that one of the tyres was knackered, but weirdly they all stayed up fine today.
So we've got 3 rear wheels and 2 fronts for the weekend, which is of course Fort William again for British National.
I have to admit I'm tired, so so tired. Lol. I was out this morning on the Fuel for a couple of hours and the fitness isn't bad, but I'm just tired, stiff and achy. Lol. But, we're going up and seeing what we can do again.
We've been having a LOT of next bike discussions in the weekend, more than I'd care to remember lol but I still don't have much of an answer yet. We do have a shortlist of 3 main players
Atherton a200
2026 Session
Zerode G3
I know which I think it'll be, but I'm keeping the options open until he's done the day at Atherton. But if it goes how I expect, I'll be telling them to start building it soon. However it'll likely be frame only rather than full bike. But I don't know if they can run an air shock yet, so another something I need to look into. They're also mullet and he's always got on with 29/29 and not preferred the mullet on any bike. That said, most things seem to be going mullet now, so he may have to forget that plan.
All good fun, it's an adventure.
Well it's time again for the wheel killer that is Fort William. Yeah I know we were there just 10 days ago, but we're heading up there again tomorrow.
We're once again back to 3 rear wheels with a new Halo Skelta rim installed and a full complement of pawls and springs putting us back to 108 engagement on the wheel.
He's starting the weekend with the DT Swiss ex511 which has just had a full spoke tension and true.
Had an interesting discussion about another potential bike deal which was crazy cheap, but all involves a bit of demo testing before we consider that option.
Anyway, that's for another day, tonight is sorting the van, kit, food, riding stuff etc....its never ending
Good luck. Keep us up to date as not always got a signal where we are
Well a decent day done with no issues at all, so I'm chilling out now and then we're off to Airbnb for the night. It'll be nice to have a decent relax on a weekend evening.
Bike went well all day. Lots of chats with a few people and I was gifted a stunning machined piece for a TMD for when it arrives that fits nicer than the Tapered spacer as the Boxxers are 1 1/8. We also had a look over the TMD and had it apart etc to see and feel the differences.
Bike chats have continued but I still can't see him on a Trek next year. But it's still way too early to say.
Let's see what tomorrow brings.
something weird happened to yr pic, weeksy - looks like a kid's balance bike on my screen 🤔
So the weekend has taken a bit of a twist/turn and I've become redundant. One of the bigger paddock teams have requested the boy pits with them for the weekend, they'll give him full paddock support, spannering, setup, repairs etc. it's a team we've known for a while and had some discussions previously but this is the first time doing this. There were some discussions last night between us all
It does mean I have no job now other than chilling and drinking coffee.
I have made up a sign to hang around my neck "will spanner for beers"
It'll be an interesting insight for him into a more professional world and as to whether that's something he wants to go down as a scenario. As always at the moment, I'm trying to stay out of it and letting him decide if it's yes or no. But as he's getting older, it's not on me to make all these decisions.
Interesting times
I think that’s great news for your lad… what’s it like for you to be made redundant so early on? It might make him very critical of your skills!!
Exciting times!